This article examines the role of permanent artworks commissioned for the Swedish Armed Forces and their interaction with military sites through visual content, materiality, and form. The aim is to understand how Sweden's welfare ideals that promote equitable access to art have been implemented within its military institutions. The article also provides new insights into how art created for Swedish military sites has responded to the country's security policy, spanning from the Cold War’s neutrality doctrine to the transition towards a postnational defence in the 2000s. The analysis is based on data regarding the 224 permanent works that the state has commissioned for military sites from the 1950s to the present day. A key finding indicates that these works have played a role in countering the rise of aggressive militarism in the Swedish army. The artworks contributed to shaping the identity of neutral Swedish soldiers during the Cold War while promoting a universalist imagery for cosmopolitan-minded soldiers in subsequent years. The article also discusses the potential of state-commissioned artworks to critique Sweden’s security policy. These insights are relevant for discussions regarding the future of art commissions for the Armed Forces following Sweden’s recent NATO membership.

This article focuses on the works of Denilson Baniwa, a prominent artist in the Indigenous contemporary art movement in Brazil. The purpose is to examine views of whiteness, which, in Baniwa’s performances and visual images, intertwines with shamanism and an Amerindian cosmology of predation and revenge. The theoretical approach of the article is not restricted to art history but draws on a broader range of anthropological literature and cultural theory. Furthermore, the article discusses how Baniwa’s art contributes to the cultural debate and research on Brazilian modernism with a critical focus on the issue of race. This foregrounds a critique of how the Brazilian avant-garde claimed to have incorporated Indigenous cosmologies into an anthropophagic sense of Brazilianness. The methodology used in the article is based on visual theory, emphasising the experience of artworks that claim a right to look back. This reframes the viewing of art into a question of friendship and enmity or even life and death.

This  article analyzes the artistic pedagogy of Lygia Pape at Santa Úrsula during the military dictatorship focusing on her commitment to educating her students’ senses and social awareness. This  draws  attention to the biopolitical aspects of Pape’s teaching as she engaged her students on a different trajectory than the “authoritarian modernization” propagated by the dictatorship.

Este artigo analisa a pedagogia artística de Lygia Pape na Santa Úrsula durante a dita-dura militar com foco em seu compromisso com a formação de sentidos e consciência social. Isso chama a atenção para os aspectos biopolíticas do ensino de Pape ao engajar seus alunos em uma trajetória diferente da “modernização autoritária” propagada pela ditadura.

This article investigates a series of artworks and design objects damaged during the Planalto Riots on the 8th of January, 2023. Whereas the media quickly picked up the staggering costs of repairing the objects, this article reflects on how these objects' symbolic meaning and material history were affected by the traumatic confrontation with the neofascist Bolsonarismo movement. The overall aim is to engage with the damaged objects trying to include their perspective into the history of the Planalto Riots. The article thus highlights the iconoclastic dimension of contemporary Brazilian neofascism, which is here seen to resonate with the self-fashioning of the Bolsonarismo-movement as the enemy of modernity. By a close reading of the damaged objects, the article attempts to make sense of the symbolic dimension of neofascist violence as this was dramatized in the riots, for example, as an abuse of Justice and as an aggressive resentment toward the representation of Black women in sites of governmental power. However, the article also proposes that the objects analyzed in this study should not simply be seen as powerless victims. Instead, the rioters' violence seems to have activated their symbolic meaning and material force of resistance. The article finally argues that the Planalto Riots visualized the need to engage more profoundly in questions concerning the role and agency of art and design installed at the governmental sites in Brasilia and to what extent these could be seen resonate with an ‘authoritarian and bloody legacy’ (Thotti, 2023) that continues to haunt Brazilian society.

Este artigo investiga uma série de obras de arte e design danificados durante os motins do Planalto em 8 de janeiro de 2023. Enquanto a mídia rapidamente percebeu os custos exorbitantes de consertar as obras, este artigo reflete sobre o significado simbólico e a história material desses objetos e como esses foram afetados pelo traumático confronto com o movimento bolsonarista. O objetivo é tentando incluir a perspectiva dos objetos danificados na história dos motins do Planalto. O artigo destaca, assim, a dimensão iconoclasta do neofascismo brasileiro, que é aqui vista em ressonância com a ideologia do movimento bolsonarista como inimigo da modernidade. Através de uma leitura dos objetos danificados, o artigo tenta dar sentido à dimensão simbólica da violência neofascista, tal como foi dramatizada nos motins, por exemplo, como um abuso da Justiça e como um ressentimento agressivo contra a representação das mulheres negras em instituições de poder governamental. No entanto, o artigo também propõe que os objetos analisados neste estudo não sejam vistos simplesmente como vítimas. Em vez disso, a violência dos manifestantes parece ter ativado seu significado simbólico e sua força material de resistência. O artigo finalmente argumenta que os motins do Planalto visualizaram a necessidade de se envolver mais profundamente nas questões relativas ao papel e agenciamento da arte nas sedes governamentais em Brasília e até que ponto estes poderiam ser vistos como ressoando com um 'legado autoritário e sangrento' (Thotti, 2023) que continua assombrando a sociedade brasileira.

This dissertation examines artistic translations of constructivism by the Brazilian artists Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998), Lygia Pape (1927-2004) and Lygia Clark (1920-1988) using the theoretical perspectives of anthropophagy and biopolitics. Previous research has addressed artworks of Brazilian constructivism, a movement which over the last few decades has been canonised as part of a multiple, global modernism. The dissertation shifts the focus to the idea of art-as-labour, which had been central for Soviet constructivists in the 1920s, and the various ways in which this idea reappeared in the practices of these three Brazilian artists. The focal points are 1) de Barros’ work as an administrator and designer at the Catholic working cooperative Unilabor in São Paulo (1954-1964), 2) Pape’s teaching at the Santa Úrsula School of Architecture (1971-1985) during the Brazilian military dictatorship, and 3) Clark’s therapeutic method Estruturação do Self (1976-1988), which she practised at her home clinic and then endeavoured to integrate into the mental health care system in Rio de Janeiro. These examples of artistic labour are viewed as instances, as well as thresholds, of a historical process in which constructivists have sought to embed art within the biopolitical field. Furthermore, the dissertation demonstrates how de Barros, Pape and Clark infused multiple aspects of human existence into their work, such as sensibility, religious beliefs, object relations, socio-political concerns, extrasensory perception and interspecies communication. It is further suggested that when Brazilian artists translated constructivism, they added concerns that have deeply altered this artistic movement and its attempts to transfigure life.